


my heart has never beaten louder

by outruntheavalanche



Category: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
Genre: Angst, Don't copy to another site, Drabble, F/M, Gen, Identity Issues, Masturbation, Not Beta Read, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 21:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19303876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outruntheavalanche/pseuds/outruntheavalanche
Summary: Bethany’s been all mixed up ever since they got home—got home, like they went on vacation or something!—and shesocan’t deal with it right now.





	my heart has never beaten louder

**Author's Note:**

> Another thing I found in a random folder of stuff!
> 
> Title from "Pulsing," by Tomas Barfod.

Bethany’s been all mixed up ever since they got home— _got home_ , like they went on vacation or something!—and she _so_ can’t deal with it right now. 

She has dreams, sometimes.

Dreams that she’s still trapped in the Game. That she’s still Dr. Shelly Oberon.

She wonders if it’s like that for the others, or if they’ve moved on. Spencer and Fridge and Martha don’t really talk much about their experience. It’s like, it happened and it’s over, and that’s that. Maybe for them it _was_ a vacation, in a way.

Bethany remembers dying. She remembers that fucking _drumbeat_ pulsing under her skin, right in the center of her chest like it’d replaced her heartbeat. Sometimes she still feels the humid night air on her skin in the middle of winter.

Bethany thinks about Alex a lot.

And, like, not just hot Alex from the Game. _Seaplane_. She thinks about Alex Vreeke, the _real_ Alex Vreeke. Alex Vreeke, a husband and father, a _grown-up_.

Sometimes at night, when she can’t sleep, Bethany lets her hand snake under the covers. She lets her fingers trace lightly over her stomach before dipping her hand into the waistband of her cotton shorts.

Bethany thinks about Alex—as he was—as she presses her fingers in and curls them, as she sighs and tosses her head back against her pillow. She’d never thought of a pillow as a luxury until the Game.

Sometimes she misses being Shelly Oberon and all that came with him, particularly certain body parts. She lets herself imagine: pushing Alex down and shoving her—Shelly’s—cock into his mouth. Alex rolling on top of her in the tall grass and sliding their cocks—hers, no, Shelly’s and his—together.

Bethany is glad to be Bethany, back in her own body, living her own life. She’s glad to be going off to college in the fall.

So what if Shelly Oberon still haunts her like a ghost? So what if he lingers at the back of her mind, reminding her of what it’d felt like to be another person if only for a brief moment? Bethany _likes_ her life. She doesn’t think about what it’d be like to be Shelly.

She doesn’t think about Alex.

(That’s a lie, Bethany’s thinking about it—about Alex—at this very moment as she writhes against her mattress with a hand between her legs.)

It’s fucked up that she can’t let go of Shelly _or_ Alex, isn’t it? It’s fucked up that Spencer, Fridge, and Martha have all moved on and Bethany feels like she’s never left the Game.

(Sometimes she wonders if she made the wrong choice to come back. Sometimes she wishes she’d stayed.)

It’s fucked up that Bethany can still sometimes hear the percussive beat of drums in her head at night.

It’s fucked up that when she closes her eyes, all she sees is Alex.

Bethany’s mouth drops open and she lets out a strangled cry, Alex’s image lingering like smoke. Her fingers go rigid and still, every muscle in her body pulled taut as a bowstring.

His name falls from her lips— _Alex_ —as Bethany goes limp against her pillow, her body unlatching like a key turning in a lock.

Bethany pulls the covers over herself, up to her chin, and squeezes her eyes shut. It’s dark enough now that she can imagine herself back to the Game, back to the Parrish Treehouse.

She can imagine herself with Alex.

Bethany drifts off into a troubled, dream-filled sleep set to the beat of drums.


End file.
